BILDERBERG - SECRET WORLD GOVERNMENT?

The annual Bilderberg Group conference is the most important meeting in the world. It is attended annually by more world leaders, more top politicians, more royalty, and business leaders, than any other gathering of any kind. The G8 summit is a mere side-show in comparison. No other meeting is attended by the leaders of all the major international institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, and the EU.

Collectively, these are the men who control the world, and their decisions therefore affect every human being on earth, now and in the future. Yet Bilderberg Group meetings receive no publicity and are not reported in the news.

Their first recorded meeting was at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, from 29th May to 31st May, 1954. The chairman was H.R.H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Since then this elite global group, which may be much older, has been called the Bilderberg Group.

The people who are invited to the Bilderberg Group, and the topics discussed, are official secrets which the media is forbidden from reporting. Bilderberg is effectively an elite secret society ruling the world from behind closed doors and outside the democratic framework.

In a recent Radio documentary the BBC disclosed that the decision to create a European Union was taken at the first official Bilderberg Group meeting in 1953, but the rest of the programme was devoted to portraying Bilderberg as a superficial extension of Western democracy.

Who organizes the Bilderberg Group? Who pays for it? What are they discussing? What are they deciding?

SOURCES:

BBC News, "Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory", 3 June 2004.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3773019.stm
The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever.
Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organisation in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn't go a bundle on its switchboard operations.
Telephone inquiries are met with an impersonal female voice - the Dutch equivalent of the BT Callminder woman - reciting back the number and inviting callers to "leave a message after the tone".
Anyone who accidentally dialled the number would probably think they had stumbled on just another residential answer machine.
But behind this ultra-modest fašade lies one of the most controversial and hotly-debated alliances of our times.
On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting.
For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.
What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.
Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.
The shadowy aura extends further - the anonymous answerphone message, for example; the fact that conference venues are kept secret. The group, which includes luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and former UK chancellor Kenneth Clarke, does not even have a website.
In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is decided by Bilderberg.
In Yugoslavia, leading Serbs have blamed Bilderberg for triggering the war which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the London nail-bomber David Copeland and Osama Bin Laden are all said to have bought into the theory that Bilderberg pulls the strings with which national governments dance.
And while hardline right-wingers and libertarians accuse Bilderberg of being a liberal Zionist plot, leftists such as activist Tony Gosling are equally critical.
A former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK.
"My main problem is the secrecy. When so many people with so much power get together in one place I think we are owed an explanation of what is going on.
Mr Gosling seizes on a quote from Will Hutton, the British economist and a former Bilderberg delegate, who likened it to the annual WEF gathering where "the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide".
"One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting," says Mr Gosling.
But "privacy, rather than secrecy", is key to such a meeting says Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, who has been invited several times in a non-reporting role.
...
As an up-and-coming statesmen in the 1950s, Denis Healey, who went on to become a Labour chancellor, was one of the four founding members of Bilderberg (which was named after the hotel in Holland where the first meeting was held in 1954).
...
"There's absolutely nothing in it. We never sought to reach a consensus on the big issues at Bilderberg. It's simply a place for discussion," says Lord Healey.
...
That activists have seized on Bilderberg is no suprise to Alasdair Spark, an expert in conspiracy theories.
"The idea that a shadowy clique is running the world is nothing new. For hundreds of years people have believed the world is governed by a cabal of Jews.
"Shouldn't we expect that the rich and powerful organise things in their own interests. It's called capitalism."

The Bilderberg Group has been called the most exclusive, and secretive club in the world. To be admitted, you have to run a multinational bank, a giant corporation or a country. Since its first meeting in 1953, it has been attended by every British Prime Minister. But until now its very existence has been shrouded in secrecy.

Simon Cox investigates the hidden world of the Bilderberg Group. Is it the anti-democratic conspiracy that its critics allege or just a private meeting to help foster global understanding?

But behind this ultra-modest fašade lies one of the most controversial and hotly-debated alliances of our times.

On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting.

For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.

What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.

Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.

The shadowy aura extends further - the anonymous answerphone message, for example; the fact that conference venues are kept secret. The group, which includes luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and former UK chancellor Kenneth Clarke, does not even have a website.

DISCREET AND ELITE

This year Bilderberg has announced a list of attendees
They include BP chief John Browne, US Senator John Edwards, World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Mrs Bill Gates

In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is decided by Bilderberg.

In Yugoslavia, leading Serbs have blamed Bilderberg for triggering the war which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the London nail-bomber David Copeland and Osama Bin Laden are all said to have bought into the theory that Bilderberg pulls the strings with which national governments dance.

And while hardline right-wingers and libertarians accuse Bilderberg of being a liberal Zionist plot, leftists such as activist Tony Gosling are equally critical.

A former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK.

"My main problem is the secrecy. When so many people with so much power get together in one place I think we are owed an explanation of what is going on.